45S COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. hi. 



from modern religion as mythology is different from modem 

 philosophy. Of primitive religion the most prominent, as 

 well as the most abiding, phase is devil-worship. Mr. Hunter's 

 remarks concerning the Santals will apply equally well to 

 barbarians all over the world, as also to the primeval men 

 from whose crude notions modern orthodoxy has inherited 

 its terrorism. " Of a supreme and beneficent God the 

 Santal has no conception . . , He cannot understand how 

 a Being can be more powerful than himself without wishing 

 to harm him. Discourses upon the attributes of the Deity 

 excite no emotion among the more isolated sections of the 

 race, except a disposition to run away and hide themselves 

 in the jungle ; and the only reply made to a missionary at 

 the end of an eloquent description of the omnipotence of 

 God, was, ' And W' hat if that Strong One should eat me ? ' 

 But although the Santal has no God from whose benignity 

 he may expect favour, there exist a multitude of demons 

 and evil spirits, whose spite he endeavours by supplications 

 to avert. So far from being without a religion, his rites 

 are infinitely more numerous than those of the Hindu." ^ 

 The genesis of this primitive devil-worship finds its ex- 

 planation in the fact that the uncontrollable agencies of 

 nature — the storm and the earthquake, the wind and the 

 wave — though supposed to resemble man in so far as they 

 were intelligent and volitional agents, could not be wholly 

 like him. Their ways were not as his ways. They were 

 not to be counted upon. They could not be prepared for, 

 defended against, or reasoned with. They might bring harm ; 

 and frequently they did bring harm. Accordingly they were 

 regarded with fear and trembling. It is not easy for us to 

 realize the extent to which in early times the unknown was 

 identified with the hurtful.^ It is not possible for us 



* AnvMis of Rural Bengal, p. 181. 



• As Humboldt says, in allusion to the long-enduring effects of this primi- 

 tive inference : — " Es liegt tief in der triiben Natur des Menschen, in einer 



